The present invention is in the field of doing e-commerce. It groups users (buyers, sellers, shippers) to trade grouped merchandise (merchandise items or services) in the way of trading stocks. It facilitates a better interface between multiple askers (sellers) and multiple bidders (buyers). More specifically, instead of being a pure “auction” platform or a “reverse auction” platform, the model will create a true merchandise “trading” platform. The system makes merchandise market operating like the stock market. It groups its users as well as merchandise and identify each group with a group ID (GID). In addition, the model will provide the shipping service carriers with a larger stage to level in the final merchandise transactions by competing shipping fees with each other in an auction-like manner. All the above mentioned features are integrated thus it make the new trading platform more versatile and flexible than any other prior arts.
The prior arts (the dominant ways of trading merchandise online) are either an “auction” model such as eBay.com, uBid.com and Amazon.com, or a “reverse auction” model such as Priceline.com. All of the above mentioned models failed to provide means to establish efficient communication channels between multiple askers and multiple bidders. Neither can those prior arts fully integrate shipping into their system. They are confronted with at least one or even several of following problems:                1) Only asker (seller) can list an item, buyer can't list if there is no seller for that item;        2) Each single piece of identical products (or services) is repeatedly listed without grouping, resulting in identical (or essentially identical) items listed repeatedly by different users or even by the same user. Users are overwhelmed with pages of repetitive useless information;        3) Users are lack of the freedom of withdrawing (cancel) their offers even though they have changed their mind before the deal is closed and a contract is bound;        4) Non-payment fraud that bother the sellers a lot;        5) Asymmetric information. It is difficult for individual users, especially those inexperienced occasional users, to find the true value of merchandise. They may end up with mis-evaluating the current market price for the listed items. As a result, unless he spends lots of time doing research, inexperienced user may face the risk of buying something overpriced or sell something undervalued;        6) Users have to jump back and forth among pages to calculate additional expenses such as a shipping and handling (S/H fee), insurance fees, commission fees and tax fees. Furthermore, they may still miss some hidden charges due to the fact that the prior arts do not provide users with the “Total Final” cost (for buyer) or profit (for seller). Users may end up with engaging in a disadvantaged trade based on the above said incomplete information;        7) Carriers (shipping service providers) do not play a strong and active role in the trading system (game) as they should. They exist rather as passive and supportive players. In fact, change in prices of shipping services would have great effect on merchandise trading. In fact, the shippers are not offered the opportunity to bid on shipping arrangements. The prior arts fail to provide the shipping carriers with the platform that the current invention will offer;        8) All prior arts are static. They do not use the full extent of today's computer power and database technology. As a result, they fail to provide an efficient dynamic trading platform that can reflect the market in real time.        9) Users' contact information is not hidden to their counterparties, so they might contact and make deals outside of the server thus make service provider sites lose their income.        10) Sellers can cheat in many ways. He can cheat on price by bidding his own items. He can also cheat on his rating by selling item to himself while without shipping out, after which he can leave himself positive rating and feedback.        
To address all of these shortcomings of those prior arts, the present invention disclosed herein has the following objectives and advantages: